The Turn of the Screw
1898
A young governess arrives at the remote estate of Bly to care for two beautiful, unsettling children, Miles and Flora. Within days, she sees them: two figures standing in the tower windows, watching. The previous governess and her lover, the valet - dead, yet present, yet beckoning. But are they real, or only in her fractured mind? And if they're real, why do the children show no fear? Why does Flora speak to the air and Miles ask questions no child should ask? James constructed something far more disturbing than a ghost story: a text that refuses to settle. Is this a tale of innocent children threatened by evil? A psychological portrait of a woman descending into paranoia? An account of actual supernatural horror, or one woman's erotic delusions projected onto the children she desires to save? The Turn of the Screw has haunted readers and critics for over a century with the same unresolved question. It is for readers who understand that the most terrifying thing is not what goes bump in the night, but the inability to trust one's own mind.
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“Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one.””
— Henry James
“He was there or was not there: not there if I didn't see him.””
— Henry James
“There was nothing in the room the next minute but the sunshine and a sense that I must stay.””
— Henry James
“The summer had turned, the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had blown out half our lights. The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the performance--all strewn with crumpled playbills.””
— Henry James
“I take up my own pen again - the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To myself - today - I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will.””
— Henry James
“I was a screen-- I was their protector. The more I saw, the less they would.””
— Henry James
“Make (the reader) think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications. My values are positively all blanks, save so far as an excited horror, a promoted pity, a created expertness... proceed to read into them more or less fantastic figures.””
— Henry James
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James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-turn-of-the-screw-14167de4-728c-45a6-9176-5100d383e83e.James, H. (1898). The Turn of the Screw. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-turn-of-the-screw-14167de4-728c-45a6-9176-5100d383e83eJames, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-turn-of-the-screw-14167de4-728c-45a6-9176-5100d383e83e.
